Keep RMT But Make It an In-Game Auction House for All Store & Crown Items

As someone who's been involved with RMT games since 2001 and thought Sony/Livegamer's implementation of game-integrated automated transaction and delivery services was the ultimate dream come true, you would find no more passionate advocate of this than me if I thought it could work here - but as much as my heart would like to say otherwise, the things I have learned from my bit of personal experience in the area would strongly caution against it, at least at this time. As others have mentioned, we don't yet have enough game balance, player population, or financial buffering to support this without a high likelihood of incurring a whole lot of sacrifice and growing pains that the community at large might not be in the best mood for right now - or at the very least there would be other areas where more gain could be had for that trouble than this.

I do agree with you that over the long-term, this could have a very positive cost-to-benefits ratio, but the problem I see is that the costs in this case are very high and front-loaded before many benefits will start being seen to offset them, and it doesn't matter how positive the benefits might be if the initial costs are too high or risky to pay at this time. Other, safer ways of increasing cashflow are more important to be exploring now, in my opinion, to get to a position where we can be more ambitious with things like this without as much risk in the process.

 

Just ask Blizzard for their old auction house code. They said they rewrote it completely so may as well ask them to use the old code.

 

Good idea or not, the staff and lawyers needed to make something like this work is likely far outside the current scope of Catnip games. There is a big leap in a company letting you buy their currency to a company that now has to guarantee real $ protection of both seller and buyer in a money for goods exchange.

 

Apologies, I did not mean for crafted items in the game or looted items in the game.

This was strictly for Crown shop items or previously purchased items from the store. I'll update my original post when I'm at my desk because mobile is a pain on forums.

Anyone that has watched me post on this forum knows that I am strongly and insistently against in-game auction houses for crafted items, looted items Etc. @Chris It would destroy the economy that we have along with the play style that Richard Garriott envisioned and that we all bought into.

I also read extensively on rmt, that is legitimate rmt in other games including Diablo and Path of Exile Etc. Yes it did fail in Diablo however they also didn't have an established rmt community. I believe Path of Exile still has their rmt going strong.

This would make it an even playing field that everyone can play in safely while at the same time allowing portalarium to make the much-needed funds.

RMT has been woven into the DNA of this game since before it went persistent. It's hard to fight the genetics of a game. This is to try to mitigate it.

The current trusted Traders system is unfair, has an appearance of favoritism, and is not inclusive at all. What you're saying @that_shawn_guy is to keep the current status quo which is unfair. I'm trying to end that and make it for everyone while providing very much-needed funds to Portalarium. There is no reason not to do so other than individual interests.

If I understand you correctly, you're saying that a subscription model with no RMT where everything is achievable in game for playing it, I 100% agree with that. I have tried arguing that point but to my dismay have been shot down numerous times. This was my attempt to offer another solution.

 

Alleine, I'd have quoted you but apparently I don't have the permissions to do so which is kind of odd given that I'm a Founder.

Anyway, my point was the game needs a revenue stream or like any other business it won't survive. Given the option I'll buy from the developers of the game and continue to support it but if, for whatever reason and I'm looking at you bundles, the developers chose to discontinue items I want or make the purchase/upgrade process lengthy, time consuming or convoluted I'll likely make that purchase from another player directly. It's not my first choice but in far too many cases it's my only choice.

A successful business makes it simple and easy for it's customers to spend their money and they offer them the things they want to buy when they want to buy them. Defunct businesses make it painful to do business with them and try to sell items their customers are not interested in. It's ok to have "special" items that are only available for a limited time but that shouldn't be the norm and really it's self defeating. It's a one time capital infusion vs a longer term continuing revenue stream. I know which I'd rather have ...

If I want to buy a TF city lot and an Eleven town home I have 2 options. Buy COTO's, use the COTO's to buy the lot and then upgrade it to TF using more COTO's and then hope and pray it becomes available through the store so I can spend more COTO's OR post a WTB and likely get everything I wanted in no more than 2 transactions. Only 1 of those supports the game at all. How is that a good thing for the game? From where I stand it makes no sense at all to me why Port/CP would shoot themselves in the foot the way they have and continue to do.

 

Speaking of which, taking payment in the game, instead of redirecting to the website where a person has to log in, might lead to more sales.

 

I don't think official RMT is the right answer, so expanding on it isn't the right path forward imho.

Focus on expanding the Rewards program (and actually implement a true rewards system) and better leverage the premium currency model (including making perhaps a controversial change to it).

Leave the players to do what they will always do with RMT and tradeable items and igg. They can't control what happens out of game, but they can for any in-game transaction such as...

Perhaps that in-game player to player transaction could incur a COTO fee of some kind...

There's a lot of things they should change to fix that. I'd expect plenty of rage quit posts but it's for the best...

Removing as much friction from the process of buying COTOs would definitely help.

 

The idea of giving portalarium a percentage cut on resales I have no problems with, if they want that.

But creating a global auctionhouse search will kill the crafter towns, and although they waste huge amounts of time at the moment forcing you to find stuff, it is one of the only activities that's actually fun and available to do (manual shopping / hunting for rares)
so I worry that it will further create the vibe of "nobodys" playing which currently is massively pervasive.

 

Per my previous two posts in this thread this would not include anything player created, looted or harvested and would only be for store and crown shop items.